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DnD 5e: Iconic is why.
wildwood
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Four editions is not enough. Get in on the playtesting here: https://wizards.com/DnD/DnDNext.aspx
Not to be confused with discussion of D&D 4e, or general RPG discusison.
This thread is proud host of the monster BadWrongFun:
And now a few words about "Iconic".
Iconic is all those warm feelings that you had when you first played D&D, which may or may not have been connected to puberty and adolescent power fantasies. Iconic is why 4e sucks so bad, with all its stupid balance and playability. Iconic is save-or-die effects, wizards-rule-fighters-drool, and skill checks in three different skills to adequately search a room. Iconic is wiping out a party with a room full of kobolds, and somehow making it the players' fault.
In short, Iconic is the new Fun. Why do you hate Iconic?
Too true, @Mikey CTS. Too true.
Do you want to get in on the Iconic(tm) action? It's easy! Just use one of these graphics when you post! Be sure to select the right size to match the depth of your commitment to Iconic.
And be sure to thank @Kalnaur when you do, for his dazzling mastery of font, line, and blinking colors!
Commence bitching!
Not to be confused with discussion of D&D 4e, or general RPG discusison.
This thread is proud host of the monster BadWrongFun:
Badwrongfun - Guardian of Fun6HD (25hp), AC 14, Att: Glare (Special)
If Badwrongfun sees you having fun in the wrong way, you're in trouble. His Glare will target the ringleader of the fun. Save vs Death or Die.
Any players that express dissatisfaction with the Glare attack will find themselves immediately targeted with the next Glare.
And now a few words about "Iconic".
Iconic is all those warm feelings that you had when you first played D&D, which may or may not have been connected to puberty and adolescent power fantasies. Iconic is why 4e sucks so bad, with all its stupid balance and playability. Iconic is save-or-die effects, wizards-rule-fighters-drool, and skill checks in three different skills to adequately search a room. Iconic is wiping out a party with a room full of kobolds, and somehow making it the players' fault.
In short, Iconic is the new Fun. Why do you hate Iconic?
Iconic was a buzzword WotC threw around a lot when they started hinting at the playtest. There was a lot of talk about breaking the game down to its most iconic elements. It's just a codeword meant to tell grognards this version of the game is for them. It was blantant pandering to try to win back that audience.
We had an animated gif of the word at some point but I'm too lazy to hunt it down.
Too true, @Mikey CTS. Too true.
Do you want to get in on the Iconic(tm) action? It's easy! Just use one of these graphics when you post! Be sure to select the right size to match the depth of your commitment to Iconic.
And be sure to thank @Kalnaur when you do, for his dazzling mastery of font, line, and blinking colors!
Commence bitching!
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And now a discussion of 'iconic', and @Kalnaur 's own iconic iconics:
But stop, don't order yet!
A group of highly skilled performance artists have acted out how a session of Next might go, if you were to play it yourself. Watch the show here.
1. Remember everything that was horrible about the 3e monk.
2. Add that.
3. Add the flaws of the expertise dice system.
4. Stir vigorously.
5. Sodomize it.
6. Drink of its tears for sustenance to go back to revamping the Wizard--that class that actually matters.
7. Is monk still seeming cooler conceptually than wizard? If so, repeat 5 and 6.
8. Publish.
[Such was my impression, anyway.]
What little we got was highly intriguing.
It is therefore no surprise whatsoever that Monks suck once again in D&D. Usually they are only handy in some DM pity party scenario where your party gets thrown in an anti magic prison or some bullshit like that.
At this point, I think someone could put together a Warlord that consists almost completely of giving extra expertise dice to other characters.
unarmed guys are not hard to balance at all, it's just that D&D and other games set it up so unarmed is not useable. it might not be a concious choice on their part, but it's still their fault.
i checked the legend game we told me about a while ago and i can make an unarmed guy that's just as powerful as a swordguy, base damage wise.
how?
the game basically just gives you a framework for weapons rather then list them all out for one. it gives you a few example weapons (the traditional small, medium & big sword, the axe, the bow, etc...), but the actual rules lead to a lot of weapons that are mechanically similar, but simply go "reflavor or make your own using the rules we used to make these".
i'm pretty sure could easily make Oxybe the Gentlemanly Non-Monk Facepuncher and give him Lord Leftolomew and Duke Rightfordson as his weapons of pugilistic choice. and as i'm always dual wielding them, the game seems to allow me to treat them as a "main" weapon that deals 2d6+bonus damage. this is because, in essence, the game doesn't make much mechanical distinction of two-handing a weapon or using a paired set of weapons, and Oxybe the Gentlemanly Facepuncher is never seen without his 'ol chaps, Lefty and Righty.
it might lack the "realism" of D&D's multiple attack rolls and penalties if doing so untrained, but it gains feasibility as a character option without needing to spend several resources to break even. and i'm more then willing to suspend a little extra disbelief if it means i can have fun.
the D&D 4th ed version of gamma world had similar rules. you had "unarmed, one-handed, two-handed, ranged (consumable), ranged (retrievable)" in both light & heavy flavours, the light ones being more accurate for slightly less damage and the heavy ones the opposite. beyond those categories, the weapon itself was just flavor. a heavy two-hander could just as easily be a broadsword, a stop sign, a piece of rebar with some cement, a sledgehammer, etc... the only real rules were "you need to use both hands to swing this, it deals X damage & has an attack bonus of Y"
you could easily just make a character who's heavy weapon was one of his fists covered in concrete and he needed the second hand to steady/lift it enough to swing or is simply Oxybot the Facepunchertron 3000 and his weapons are just various detatchable fists, just because.
D&D monks suck because of several bad decisions made by the devs that drag the character down, not because the character concept is flawed. if you set out to go "lets make unarmed combat realistic" and set the whole thing in a world where armed combat isn't, then the unarmed guy will probably suffer. if you go "let's make unarmed combat just as awesome as armed combat" you run into far less trouble with the concept.
go look at the D&D 3.5 weapon list. how many of them stand out as more then just "as weapon X, only damage type Y"? most of the weapons are rather a dull read and you can extrapolate, for the most part, the damage formula:
light weapons seem to do from d4-d6
one-handed go from d6-d8
two handers go from 2d4 to 2d6
at that point you just give the smaller dice a higher threat range or the long throw property, the bigger die a larger crit modifier or the short throw property & you pick a damage type for it.
1d4 19-20x2 crit slashing, dagger
1d6 x3 crit slashing, handaxe
1d6 19-20x2 crit, slashing, shortsword
1d8 x3 crit, slashing, battleaxe
2d4 19-20x2 crit, slashing, falchion
2d6 x3 crit, slashing, greataxe
1d4 range 20 x2 crit, piercing, shuriken
1d6 range 10 x2 crit, piercing, shortspear
1d6 range 20 x2 crit, piercing, javelin
1d8 range 10 x2 crit, piercing, trident
2d4 range 20 x2 crit, piercing, a bushel of javelins
2d6 range 10 x2 crit, piercing, a bundle of tridents
pretty much dead-on for the 3rd ed rules, wouldn't you say? the actual ones might be a slight deviation, but for the most part it's close
so why couldn't you just go:
2d6 x3 crit, bludgeoning, Two-Fisted Fury
because the game doesn't really give you any guidance when it comes to making your own weapons and since it gives you a rather extensive list, any weapon you do make, will probably be balanced against the existing ones.
it's not simply the rules you include or exclude, but also how you present the ones you have. between the monk class (who gets unarmed damage boosts) and the rather poor listing for "unarmed attack" and the pathetic two-weapon fighting rules, you're dissuaded from making an unarmed not-monk.
a different set of rules, however, could make that concept easily viable.
it's not hard, you just need to have the intent to not make unarmed suck.
In LOTFP Fighters start with +2 to hit, which increases by +1 every level. Every other class starts at, and stays at, +1 BAB. That's right, to hit values don't ever improve for any other class other than the fighter. Suddenly the fighter is looking a lot more badass. Probably unworkable for anything past the original 4 classes, and doesn't make fighters necessarily interesting (just powerful, or at least niche-protected) but it's fun to think about.
As well as the "every attack comes with a free manoeuvre" rule for fighters I've had it that armour and weapons are literally better when used by a fighter. Anyone can bolt on some plate armour but a fighter should be able to make the most of it.
Monks shouldn't be that hard to make interesting and effective. Sometimes it seems like D&D designers are just determined to make them weak.
SoogaGames Blog
Wait, magic had a cost to pay for screwing with the laws of nature? I subscribe to this theory and will check this out.
My favorite rules-lawyer fix was that the way the monk's ability to take fighter bonus feats was worded, you could technically ignore ALL the requirements of the feat you wanted, instead of just the 'be a fighter' requirement. Then you take Weapon Supremacy, which lets you take 10 on attack rolls.
I still think that giving monks limited flight is pretty awesome - it creates a cool mechanical expression of one of their class touchstones (mobility), gives them a better way to engage distant or elevated targets (fly up, punch in face), and it creates some really awesome character flavor that doesn't step outside the purview of the monk class (because monks being able to leap huge distances and balance on tiny tree branches and run on walls and whatnot is something of a class trope).
But then the sheet would say 'fly' instead of 'jump' and character sheets can never be looked at in terms of the fiction of that character and flying sounds like magic which is only for wizards, so it's probably not gonna happen in Next.
Saying the two put out similar damage and thus are balanced is just not true as one is highly gear (and thus loot) dependant and the other is a self made man.
Not saying a good unarmed specialist class can't be done. Just that it's not as simple as it may appear at first glance.
saying "it can't be balanced because the monk you're describing doesn't need good gear to be awesome but the fighter does" is describing is both the same, yet a wholly separate issue: that your fighter is an awesome fighter because he has a +X sword, not because he's an awesome fighter. your character isn't awesome, his gear is... the fighter is nothing more then a glorified coat rack.
remove the need for the gear to achieve parity and have the gear be an extension of the character.
since i'm watching a lot of One Piece lately, is Zoro an awesome fighter because his 3 swords are awesome, or because of his skill? is Gourry from Slayers powerful because of his weapon? in both cases no: Zoro is highly skilled and Gourry is ridiculously strong... in the latter case, they make it a running gag that he constantly needs to replace or reforge his mundane swords since they can't withstand more then a few swings.
those are characters who are clearly the "fighter" variety, but aren't glorified coat racks, even when they carry magical items (like gourry's Sword of Light).
if anything, it just brings to light D&D's badly designed item dependency, sometimes called the christmas tree syndrome (due to the character glowing like a christmas tree from head to toe when seen under a "detect magic" spell), where if you don't have item X, you're boned as you can't reach expected parity.
why not just remove the dependency then and balance the game around character abilities & a few base damages (see: the legend game, Gamma World & what i extrapolated from 3rd ed)?
it is simple, it really is.
it just requires the devs to think about these things from the start when designing the game.
Yeah, their current solution to magical items being just a bunch of plusses is to also have like ten random tables you can roll on to give the magical item its description.
And a lot of rules text about how magical items have mysterious powers that PCs might not be able to work out, because making the DM do even more math when you don't know what your magic sword is doing is always a good idea.
Arcs Magica is also a RPG that had a magic system with costs to pay and inherent dangers, and it did it in a really interesting way. Check that one out as well, although I should warn you that it's mechanics are kinda complex.
Throughout the playtesting cycle so far, Wizards and the people it selects for cheerleading 5e have been consistently reminding us to keep an open mind and that nothing is set in stone for the edition. I'm curious if people agree with me that this is just bad advice to playtesters. If you value the feedback you're receiving, you want everyone hammering away at the submission, trying to find every loophole, criticizing every word choice, questioning every +1 or wonky spell. You want the detractors getting their torches and pitchforks trying to burn your submission to the ground, and you want the fans to identify the parts of the game that they love and want to absolutely never see go away, so that you know to do more of those things.
"Keep an open mind" is pretty good advice, though, if you're treating the playtest as little more than a public beta marketing opportunity. Not that I'd ever be so cynical to suggest --- oh hell with it, I am that cynical.
Tabletop:13th Age (mm-mmm), D&D 4e
Occasional words about games: my site
Yeah. That was one of the reasons I love Mage: The Acsension.
that's why magic in those systems is quite powerful.
the drawbacks are there primarily for flavour, IMO and not really there as a primary balancing factor... the times i've played mage, i've never really had to seriously worry about paradox unless i said "**** it" and started going hog-wild because my options were either "paradox backlash" or "faceful of horrible death"... most minor paradoxes can be dealt with in-game without too much hassle, usually being a minor complication in our plans, and all the storytellers who invoke them in a "serious" manner do so to further the plot... they were basically invoking mouseguard's "failing forwards", though i fully concede that it's easy to use paradoxes as a way to **** with the character, but that's just bad GMing IMO.
a system that says "mages are equal to warriors" but then goes "mage spells are better then anything a fighter can do" is not putting mages and warriors on equal footing. going "magic is dangerous though" is missing the point:
depending on how dangerous it is, it's either pointless to play a mage as a character as your life expectancy is non-existant... you're better off just throwing as many big spells as you can until the dice finally kill you.
or the danger is trivial and the real game is "how do i go about jumping through these hoops?". once you've beaten that game, the danger is non-existant and we're back to "mage spells are better then anything a fighter".
the third, and just as unenviable, option would be to make mages less powerful then warriors, but at that point we have the class as a double noob trap: where even if you can circumvent the danger you're struggling to keep up, or you're just as likely (if not more) to kill yourself as your enemies are.
the way ars magic and mage treats magic works fine for those systems, but that's because of the context of who a mage is in the world & the mechanics. if i play in a conan-based campaign, it's probably because i want to play a conan-like character rather then the evil necromancer conan is stated to kill. in D&D both conan and the necromancer are supposed to be viable concepts at all levels of play as they are billed as such. if you make necromancy more powerful but dangerous, it either becomes a noob trap or a speedbump.
balance them both in relation to each other. it should also be noted that casting magic in combat is already dangerous, as there is a good chance you're going to be threatened by some guy with a sword. that should be punishment enough.
if you're going to punish the spellcaster for fighting back by giving his fireball a 10% chance to explode in his face, give the fighter a 10% chance of self-impalement also if he dares to stand up to the same bandit.
if you're going to look at another system for rules, that's fine. that's how i design things myself: see how other people have done thing and if i can port it into my own game... but you need to remember the context those rules were created in before sitting down to figure out why they work for that game.
i loves me some mage, but when i sit down to play mage, it's because i want to play mage.
not D&D.
I've gone back and forth on Vancian casting in general. I can see the appeal and how a group could make it work but as the default magic system for the most popular RPG on the planet I think it's just far too much of a minefield.
In fact, having spells that are At-Will, Encounter and Daily was something I rather liked in 4e, despite not being a big fan of the powers system in its entirety.
SoogaGames Blog
In most of the traditional fiction D&D is based on the hero is almost always a warrior (just as an most epic poems and hero sagas etc), and occasionally he dabbles in magic. the whole idea of a wizard as protagonist/PC is sort of foreign to the genre. The most magical protagonists I can think of are Elric, and some of the Jack Vance magicians, and even those guys swing swords at least as often as they sling spells. I feel like the fireball-slinging, reality warping demi-god that is the high level D&D Wizard is something else entirely.
now, the following is a big "in my opinion" rant. reader beware!
the wizards of lore and whatnot are supposed to be more of a plot element, a force of nature, rather then a hero the reader is meant to identify with. newer media, like say Harry Potter, brings the purely magical protagonist as a main character but i think it's more of a product of it's time:
we can identify with magic now more then we could in the past.
in the past to send a message it took long since it needed to be delivered by foot or horse. intercontinental transit, like trains & later airplanes, as well as the existance of the telegraph allowed for easier delivery of messages across long distances, but it's really email & instant messaging that allowed us to imagine how it would work if Harry could simply wave his wand and let Ginny know to pickup milk, bread & cockatrice eggs while picking up young Albus from his football practice... instant messaging is something we're familiar with even if the delivery method is difference.
even the nimbus 3000, a flying broom, is not outside the realm of our imagination. many of us have flown in a plane before or felt a feeling of weightlessness while we see scenery zipping around on a rollercoaster or whatnot... hell, personal jetpacks exist, though more as an expensive toy then anything else.
now, it's not that we accept that "Wingardium Leviosa" and a flick of the wrist is realistic, but many of the things the magic does is things we can already do in modern time, the magic just makes it a bit more convenient (or not so much in other cases). this allows us to expand and ease our suspension of disbelief onto other things, like the patronus and transformation spells, as well as the existence of goblin banks, house elves and dementors.
on the flipside, it's actually a bit harder for us to identify with the dirt-farmer come hero: most people here, while not rich, have access to more resources then the poor, peasant hero who picks up his dad's old sword and struggles every step of the way, his only joy in life before the call to adventure being "till the earth with hoe" and "poke horse with stick".
think of how people lived in the ancient times when hercules, perceus and co. were created. those heroes lived and existed in situations the average reader/listener could relate far more to. one of hercules' task was cleaning out a stable. we have tools at our disposal that would make this a much easier, if maybe lengthy task. back then not so much... it was already a difficult task that required a bit of elbow grease to do right. many of the heroes of yore were superhuman... super strong, fast, skilled, hard to hurt, etc... is something far more people could relate to back then. even if the hero ended up living a more extravagant lifestyle then the reader, it was one they could imagine or fantasize about.
i mean, let's look at herc's tasks:
Slay the Nemean Lion.
Slay the nine-headed Lernaean Hydra.
Capture the Golden Hind of Artemis.
Capture the Erymanthian Boar.
Clean the Augean stables in a single day.
Slay the Stymphalian Birds.
Capture the Cretan Bull.
Steal the Mares of Diomedes.
Obtain the girdle of Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons.
Obtain the cattle of the monster Geryon.
Steal the apples of the Hesperides.
Capture and bring back Cerberus.
now, dial it all back from 11 to somewhere along the lines of 1 or two and we get:
kill a lion
kill a snake
catch a deer
catch a boar
clean a stable
kill a flock of annoying birds
catch a bull
steal horses
steal a belt
steal cows
steal apples
bring back a dog
the tasks weren't anything crazy to imagine, they were just turned up to 11 and weaved into the mythology of the time. i'm sure many people could relate to a dangerous and hard to kill predator living in the area, killing animals and people. they were simply turned up to 11, but as they were based around familiar experiences the listener could relate to the story and the hero very easily.
the existence of superheroes today, with the herculean set of powers being a rather common one means it's one we can still identify with. who wouldn't want to be faster, stronger and whatnot? but the mage of yore was far more difficult to put yourself in place of. it was, however, easier to use the mage as personification of a force of nature or some sort of unnatural things "this guy is human, but is doing things humans should not be doing", and the hero is an identifiable character who overcomes this force given form.
now keeping all this in mind, let's get back to the D&D mage:
fireball, burning hands, magic missile, flight, message, scry, etc... all have modern counterparts: a grenade, a flamethrower, firearms, airplanes, texting, phones with cameras, etc... it's all things we can identify with but "magic-ify" for the sake of suspension of disbelief because of the world the character lives in.
the hero that simply goes in sword-a-swinging and not much else is more of a romantic ideal, IMO, then one you can identify with... a callback to an older time, rather then a hero you can identify closely with.
IMO it's technology and what it gives us that let us identify with the magical protagonist more. which is why we like playing those heroes. it's foreign to the genre because most of it's famous works were done in a time when we couldn't properly conceptualize magic beyond a force of nature (or sin against it). thanks to technology, we can.
you'll notice elric and co. start propping up in the 1960's-ish. think of the technology of the times: space travel was now a real thing, lasers were being demonstrated, satellite broadcast being pioneered, the entire medium of videogames was invented, the foundation for what was to become the internet was layed down... i'm not amazed that spellcasters were becoming more prominent, we were putting men on the moon... we were doing the fantastic!
now as i said at the start: the D&D mage is not a product of it's inspiration... the fireball slinging combat mage is a product of it's ruleset, but it's one that has evolved since then.
at this point we want our fantastic mages and swordsmen to be on equal footing. we want the mages we can relate with and the swordsmen we romanticize to work together to create our stories, not have one overshadow the other. is it possible?
yes.
it needs to be done deliberately though.
just my 2cp worth
For a particularly abject example demonstrating that specializing to this degree is terrible, I offer up the experience of anyone who played a decker in Shadowrun 3E. Or a rigger, for that matter, most of the time (certainly starting out.)
Being a healer was what the Cleric's original concept, but the mechanics ended up supporting a completely different style of action, ya know? And healing either happened in down-time/off-screen, or it was a waste of a combat turn better spent casting Holy Word.
looking back several editions, AD&D druid got cure light as a second level spell (which he actually got at 2nd level!), but you're still using up your single 2nd level spell to cure at best 8 HP.
later editions gave the druid better healing capabilities (by making him a nature cleric in 2nd and a "real" class in 3rd again, with access to cure at 1st level) and in 3rd the bard could also step up if you REALLY needed needed him to and the ranger and pally could somewhat heal, as an afterthought (the AD&D ranger only got cure light through the 2nd level druid spells, which he got at level 12, whereas the 2nd ed ranger could at 8th. the paladin in both AD&D and 2nd ed could heal too... starting at around 9th level).
but all in all, any form of healing was either coming from the cleric or consumables, like potions or wands.
now, part of the problem was that playing the cleric in combat was boring. he had some neat spells, but the party wanted him to prep healing since it took forever to naturally heal and they probably didn't want to have to leave the dungeon or whatnot after the 2nd or 3rd fight.
when 3rd ed came, the cleric could swap out prepared spells for healing, but the onus to not do anything but heal with his slots was still there since otherwise, the party will be laid out for days... unless you had access to healing potions or wands, which in 3rd ed was VERY easy to a hold of. you could scribe scrolls as early as 1st level and potions as early as 3rd, then wands at 6th. as long as money kept coming in, you could keep making those healing items and have them do the heavy lifting, especially since most healing spells couldn't keep up with monster damage and might buy you one more round at best (the ogre deals 2d8+7 damage per hit, whereas a cure mod is 2d8+3 at that level)... you really only did combat healing as a last ditch/final effort thing.
you were still asked to keep those spells for healing though, unless you had a few good debuffs that could drop an enemy out of combat, like hold person. taking an enemy out in one turn means not having to heal a turn's worth of damage done by him... a good trade-off, IMO, and a reason why the wizard's sleep is considered a very powerful early game spell: taking out even 2 guys with it generally means saving the party from two instances of 1d6+2 (or more) damage in the early game, and even if it's weak, color spray can stun for at least one round.
the only 3rd ed offshoot i'm familiar enough with to remember some rules off the top of my head is pathfinder, which made it "better" for the cleric in that they felt the need to give the cleric a large pool of daily "not spells" healing, drawing from the same "channel energy" pool, which can either cure living/hurt undead in an area or vice versa depending on if you channel positive or negative energy, the healing itself is weaker then a cure spell though, which still exists.
healing surges in 4th came as a way to allow a party to survive a journey without a dedicated healer or a decanter of endless heals. all characters can now heal out of combat by taking a few minutes to catch their breath and tend their wounds, but if you have a warlord or cleric, they can heal you with a bonus when in combat, allowing the party a safety net of sorts and the ability to endure longer in fights rather then run if it starts going bad.
where am i going with this? the cleric's original concept wasn't healer: it was a priest... a holy man. unfortunately the game pretty much required you to have magical healing or take a week between fights to heal up, and the priest was (unfortunately for him) the only available one.
this lead to a lot of pressure from most groups for someone to be a dedicated healer, and the joke i often heard is "last guy at the table plays the cleric", meaning if you were lucky enough to make your character first, you didn't get stuck playing the healer and got to do cool stuff other then "cure light wounds on the fighter or rogue *roll dice* 5 health back".
so cleric went from being a "spiritual center of the group" conceptually to "glorified, walking healbot" in play. later editions and off-shoots tried to solve the problem, but like many things you need to look at the issue as a whole and analyze it, rather then go "cleric's a healer, e-yup, so how do we solve it?". many things lead to the cleric being the healer other then simply having the spell on his list... why else would he be known as the healer rather then the guy who divines answers from his god?
like many things "cleric is a healer" is complicated issue that you need to look at the whole system to see the problem: if i want to play a cleric, a man who can channel a god's divine blessing or wrath, i need to be prepared to do a lot of not-wrath-bringing and a lot more blessing, since no one else can and our only other options is to go to the spa for a week and heal, or spend a lot of money on a magic stick of band-aids.
a dev can solve the problem if they set out to do so, as long as they don't half-ass it. 4th ed showed it could be done, to lessen the reliance on a dedicated healer AND give the best healer things to do outside of purely healing. is it the best way? i'd say that's up to the individual, but it does show it can be done.
Call of Duty-zilla, however, is a whole other problem in itself.
man i'm ranty lately.
Haha-wait. That's actually pretty good.
Okay Mearls, I don't know what you're playing at, but you're starting to make some kind of sense.
Well, not quite killing that sacred cow, but pretty close. NegaMearls is doing really well so far with this alignment talk, and it's weird.
What is happening right now I don't even...
Did he just openly acknowledge that a 4E design choice was good? Did he just openly acknowledge that save or suck, well, sucks? WHO ARE YOU
Aaaaand we're back to normal.
Originally, the cleric was specifically conceived as an undead hunter like Van Helsing (notably the Hammer Horror version of the character), with elements borrowed from crusaders like Odo of Bayeux. The class was actually created as a counter for a vampire villain in Gygax's own D&D game.
I agree with all of this. Really, I like a lot of how MicroLite20 approaches D&D, and feel rather like it better encapsulates the stated goals of D&D Next than most of what I'm seeing come out of D&D Next. Particularly how easy it is to port over new mechanics and achieve the exact level of complexity you desire.
he's acknowledging alignment as fluff rather then rules being a good thing and how to keep the fluff of stuff like detect and protection from X without tying it to mechanical alignment. he's noticed (or at least voicing) why fireball and damage in general was good in old eds and sucked in 3rd... and why control spells rocked in that version and seems to be looking into taking steps to solve the "control deck wins" situation.
even the line after his trip up: "For spells and other player options, we feel it's best to give the DM confidence that players can build characters from the available resources without things becoming wildly unbalanced."
that last line itself shows that he wants to learn and listen to what a lot of us have been saying. he might have tripped up at the line Denada mentioned but at least he's trying to catch himself.
but goddammit... i want medusas. i just don't want that bullshit insta-gib. while i'm in the mentality that monsters should be built differently by the PCs, i don't want to bring my hockey gear as a player to find out the monsters are actually playing football.
that means as a player i'm going to have to go to Larry's Discount Magic Emporium and stock up on counters to common SoD's. that's not good design, as it turns the game into a binary "do you have a counter for SoD? if yes, then ignore it as the threat is non-existant. if no, hope you can save". if there isn't a hard counter to the save or die, then it's pure random luck and neither player OR character skill becomes involved.
roll a d20 for rocks fall, everybody dies.
what scares me is the line of "DMs can simply choose to mix and match monsters as they wish, avoiding instant kill critters if that's not what the group wants", because to me, it means "unless the DM is VERY conscious of what that the inclusion of these monsters can do, he can avoid putting them in. otherwise a DM who doesn't can potentially ruin his party's night by accident because he thought the medusa or beholder were cool, and ended up turning a PC into a statue or dust in one bad roll"
so close mearls.
so damn close.
if this is what fever-induced mearls can produce, i need to get this guy on anti-health pills, just sneak some in his sandwiches or something... he could potentially be able to pull 5th ed into something i might possibly want to play.
It's a page right out of Paizo's late term play test handbook. "If we SAY we want to balance it, and we're going to, they'll never notice when we don't, or make the imbalance worse. If they do, well just put up another questionnaire and it'll be good."
i'm a surly and cynical man with little beyond funny cat videos to lift his spirits.
let me have this one.
I love ya (and still drag up your old OoTS forum posts on occasion when I'm working on a design and checking it for errors) so I don't mean to be so negative.
Sooooo... Should the unthinkable happen, do I get to say "I told you so?" ;-)